W&m Women, Vcu Men Have Streaks On Line

April 20, 2001|By SONNY DEARTH Daily Press

Remember February, when Old Dominion's CAA winning streak in women's basketball ended at 113 games with a loss at James Madison?

Similar reigns of CAA dominance, on a different kind of court, by the William and Mary women and Virginia Commonwealth men will be in jeopardy at Byrd Park in Richmond when the conference tennis championships begin a three-day run today at 9 a.m.

The W&M women have won the tournament the past 15 years. Since the spring of 1995, when the format changed to dual-match play, the Tribe is 94-4 in completed individual matches in the tournament. VCU lost 5-2 to W&M in last year's title match.

But in the past week, CAA women's tennis turned topsy-turvy. VCU, despite having only four healthy players, upended the Tribe 4-3, ending W&M's conference-match winning streak at 79. So those two teams, plus seemingly the best squad in Old Dominion's history, each had one CAA loss.

It seemed that tiebreakers would be needed to resolve the tournament seeding between teams nationally ranked 38th (VCU), 45th (ODU) and 73rd (W&M).

But Monday, Richmond, which is ineligible for the tourney, stunned VCU 4-3, dropping the Rams to the third seed. W&M (9-11, 7-1) received the top seed because of its 5-2 early-season victory against ODU (18- 1) inside the McCormack-Nagelsen Tennis Center. So now the top three seeds are in reverse order of their national rankings.

All three contenders have proven talent at the top of the lineup, but have questions with depth. VCU almost always forfeits at bottom positions, and the Tribe and ODU have had few easy wins near the bottom of their lineups.

"It's definitely going to be interesting," said Ana Radeljevic, one of the Lady Monarchs' top players. "I believe my team's going to do very well."

VCU didn't play its first CAA men's tennis tourney until 1995, but the Rams men's individual record in those five tourneys is an amazing 60-0, 15 consecutive 4-0 sweeps.

The Rams, with a large complement of European players, shocked people a year ago with a surge to the NCAA title match, which they lost to Stanford. But VCU lost two of its top three from that team and is ranked only 40th, one of its lowest marks since Swedish coach Paul Kostin took over in 1991 and turned a struggling program into a powerhouse.

William and Mary's men, ranked No. 66, should be VCU's strongest challengers. The Tribe (13-10, 7-1) took a 3-1 lead on the Rams less than two weeks ago outdoors in Williamsburg, thanks to the doubles point and triumphs by No. 2 Patrick Brown and No. 4 Geoffrey Russell. But VCU (15-10) won the three remaining matches for a 4-3 victory.

"VCU has set the bar and we just keep aiming for it," Tribe men's coach Peter Daub said. "I wanted them to be loose and go out and play (against VCU). I had no game plan. I just told jokes before the singles and the doubles."

W&M has taken the doubles point in almost every match. His top two duos - Brown-Trevor Spracklin and Russell-Brian Lubin - have won about 85 percent of the time. "I'd say that's pretty remarkable," Daub said. "Our doubles has been phenomenal."

If the Tribe can repeat its 6-1 regular-season victory over a young but talented ODU team, a rematch with VCU could be in the offing Sunday.

* FORMAT: Dual matches. Whoever wins at least two of the three doubles matches (pro-sets to eight games) takes a 1-0 lead. Then, each of the six best-of-3-sets singles matches is worth one point. The first team to four points wins.